OMFG!!! 16 Hour Maintanance window!!!

[Sky]

Like I said, I don't know what kind of hunters you've had to deal with. Well, apparently dumb, inexperienced ones.

Basically, aggro-wise, the hunter is a buffer for the healer. If the warrior loses aggro, it should go to the hunter, not the healer. The pet should hold and give up aggro as needed with snarl/cower, or in bad situations also utilizing the hunter's aggro management powers. Hunters excel at controlling where they sit on the aggro list, and I don't even have my full powerset at level 25.

Most hunters also go for +agi items to boost their damage, which is great for solo and pvp, but garbage for groups, because they draw a lot more aggro, but are pushovers. I've gone for +sta gear and have almost double the hit points for my level (just under 1000hp at lvl 25, unbuffed, my +6 sta buff from food puts me up over a thousand). I can't tank, but I can hold aggro for a couple minutes if needed, long enough to get the tank healed, the healer to get away, or whatever. And more importantly, I can then give that aggro back again and get out of melee.

A note on pets: shopping around for a good one is worth the time. Not all pets are created equal, and some are damned nice (100 to all resists, for instance).

[chinslim]

We intentionally included a hunter as part of our planned pvp group makeup for mark, group speed buff, and tracking.  I don't think a well-played hunter by any means gimps a group in pve...and it's #$%ing pve anyways.

[Paelos]

I've found a two warrior duo to be helpful for smaller quests that are bigger than a solo in the absence of a healer. I could see a similar setup working with a hunter. Ideally you switch pulls and change up who holds aggro so the other heals with less downtime. It worked very well with a warrior and I killing elementals in Arathi.

[Calantus]

A lot of hunters are used to near-invincible solo play and don't want to learn how to be good group members.  Think Everquest necromancers.  A well-played grouping necromancer was an amazing asset to the group.  However, most pick up necros you got thought "grouping" meant "I solo stuff next to you guys" at best and "I DoT mezzed mobs at will" at worst.

Almost anyone can out-taunt a warrior, that is what makes the warrior class worth playing and group play something more than a trivial exercize in "everyone go full burn every pull."  Aggro control is a group effort.  One tard can mess up the whole thing.

Give the man a cookie.

Seriously, this is what I'm talking about. Very few hunters I meet understand how to play with the group. It's almost as bad as paladins, but the non-retarded ones soon learn caution because paladins aren't the unstoppable juggernaughts the retards on the WoW boards seem to think they are. It's exactly like Necros in EQ, pet classes and other good soloers tend to be crap in groups because some people are too stupid to switch roles. And a soloist in your group means they do more harm than good outside of easy missions.

Funnily enough warlocks don't seem to suffer so much from this, but I think it has more to do with the fact that it can be hard to pull aggro from a decent tank by accident as a DoT class.

[Sable Blaze]

You take a hunter pet into a place like Maraudon and it's going to buy a farm in less than a minute. They can be useful to offtank an overpull or some other sort of furball, but they'll usually die and rather quickly. They can give you enough time to save a primary healer, but relying on them to actually tank is a pipedream.

Keeping aggro for warriors under 30 is a nightmare. It does get better post-40, but only just. If your group doesn't work with you they'll be constantly pulling aggro--and you'll be out of rage in seconds trying to get it back. Being a 6000AC, 4000hps spectator is a frustration I can do without (though one I'm familiar with).

Which brings us to the point made by the solo mentality. This is spot on. It's why you don't let hunters pull. It's why you don't let druids pull. It's why you don't let mages pull. Rogues can be good at sap pulling, but it's not always the best way (especially if you lack any other form of crowd control, i.e. mages). The game is so easy normally, that most people aren't learning how to group before lvl50. This wasn't so much of a problem in EQ. It IS a problem in WoW. Instances start getting really mean with Uldaman. Its get rapidly more difficult from there.

Lastly, I play a warlock on the side. I find the comment about them learning not to pull aggro constantly rather interesting. When you get your voidwalker, you learn really fast not to pull aggro from him--the hard way. The 'walker is a bit easier to work with than a warrior, but the same behavior stands you good stead in instance groups.

[AcidCat]

Aggro management is a challenge in this game. As a druid, it is my main struggle in doing instances, gettting aggro from healing. I know the old routine about using lesser heals, just keeping people alive not topped off, etc., but it is still a challenge, especially on instance end bosses. Once I get aggro I just turtle up in bear mode and stop attacking, but it's very hard for anyone else to get aggro off me. I usually die first :(

[Riggswolfe]

Alot of these problems stem back to the "Awesome" changes made to warriors. In beta a good warrior could hold aggro on half a dozen mobs at the same time. His biggest fear was the healer being unable to keep up with the damage he was taking.

As for grouping with "solo" classes and such. My typical group for instances over the last few weeks has been:

Me (Paladin)
Mage
Rogue
Druid
Another Pally

Here's how things go usually:

Rogue saps one mob. Mage sheeps another. The rest of us kill the casters first and work our way up to the melee mobs. We have gone through all high level instances that we've encountered (Zul'farrak, Mauradon, Sunken Temple, etc) this way and very rarely have a party wipe. (in fact, we only wipe if we get a random patrol on us or we have a breakdown in party communication at a critical moment. Maybe 1 or 2 wipes per instance).

[stray]

Alot of these problems stem back to the "Awesome" changes made to warriors. In beta a good warrior could hold aggro on half a dozen mobs at the same time. His biggest fear was the healer being unable to keep up with the damage he was taking.

Exactly. Aggro management is not a "challenge" in this game. It's broken.

[MrHat]

Back to the maintenance:

Server is laggiest it's been in a few weeks.  Wonder what they did to it.

Edit: Server crash.

[schild]

Wow. I'll bet they wish they hadn't lost the b.net guys.

[Velorath]

Seriously, this is what I'm talking about. Very few hunters I meet understand how to play with the group. It's almost as bad as paladins, but the non-retarded ones soon learn caution because paladins aren't the unstoppable juggernaughts the retards on the WoW boards seem to think they are. It's exactly like Necros in EQ, pet classes and other good soloers tend to be crap in groups because some people are too stupid to switch roles. And a soloist in your group means they do more harm than good outside of easy missions.

Then could it be said that this could well be a growing problem as MMO's move away from forced grouping?  It seems that with games these days allowing solo play to take you up to the top levels almost as quickly as grouping that I'd be surprised if even half the population of CoH or WoW understand the best ways to play their characters in groups since they've never had to learn the skills.

[stray]

Then could it be said that this could well be a growing problem as MMO's move away from forced grouping?  It seems that with games these days allowing solo play to take you up to the top levels almost as quickly as grouping that I'd be surprised if even half the population of CoH or WoW understand the best ways to play their characters in groups since they've never had to learn the skills.

Maybe this will eventually evolve into a good thing. At least mentally, it's moving players away from the whole tank/mage/healer crap. Now all we need is a change in mechanics.

[Disco Stu]

Alot of these problems stem back to the "Awesome" changes made to warriors. In beta a good warrior could hold aggro on half a dozen mobs at the same time. His biggest fear was the healer being unable to keep up with the damage he was taking.

Exactly. Aggro management is not a "challenge" in this game. It's broken.

No its not. A tank shouldn't be able to hold 6 mobs. If they could the game would be far to easy. The only problem right now is stupid fucking players doing as much damage to one mob as possible as quickly as possible. Then being shocked when the tank can't hold.

[stray]

No its not. A tank shouldn't be able to hold 6 mobs. If they could the game would be far to easy. The only problem right now is stupid fucking players doing as much damage to one mob as possible as quickly as possible. Then being shocked when the tank can't hold.

I'm just saying...If they're going to make another EQ clone, how about not fucking with the one thing that made EQ worth a damn?

I've no problem with Blizzard trying something "new and exciting", but if that was really what they wanted, these kind of things would have been changed from the ground up. As it is though, it's EQ 1.5. Hacking on "new and exciting" changes just fucks it up.

[Disco Stu]

No its not. A tank shouldn't be able to hold 6 mobs. If they could the game would be far to easy. The only problem right now is stupid fucking players doing as much damage to one mob as possible as quickly as possible. Then being shocked when the tank can't hold.

I'm just saying...If they're going to make another EQ clone, how about not fucking with the one thing that made EQ worth a damn?

I'm very confused. Are you suggesting they just give a tank an insta hold button that can't be broken. How the fuck is that fun? If tanks could hold agro perfectly in this game there would be no fucking challenge. As it is even the higher lvl instances are a little too 'safe' for me. With any decent group there is almost no possibility of a wipe. You still need tankers, nukers and healers. They havn't changed that. Its pretty much impossible to do any instance without at least one warrior or pally. And 2 is almost always perferable.

[Dren]

Then could it be said that this could well be a growing problem as MMO's move away from forced grouping?  It seems that with games these days allowing solo play to take you up to the top levels almost as quickly as grouping that I'd be surprised if even half the population of CoH or WoW understand the best ways to play their characters in groups since they've never had to learn the skills.

Not an issue IMO.  The people that I know that got to the highest levels purely by solo continue to solo no matter what.  They have no desire to group so groups aren't affected at all.  Thus, they solo exclusively.

I suppose there are a few that would all of a sudden start dabbling in group play, but my guess is that is for group PvP, which is an altogether different animal than group PvE.

In my experience, there are those that like to solo and those that like to group.  If given the option (by game mechanics,) they will segregate themselves accordingly.  I've seen this happening quite a bit in WoW.